What is Website Maintenance and Why is It so Important for Your Business

12 min. read

Website maintenance is the process of checking to see whether your website is healthy and performing well. It’s about keeping up with security updates, fresh content, encouraging traffic growth, and making sure your website visitors are happy. Website maintenance services are an essential ingredient for engaging and retaining your customers, thus strengthening your SEO and Google rankings.

Whether your business is small or large-sized, you’re going to need website maintenance. But what is it? How to maintain a website? What are the major benefits? Let’s explore the topic in more detail and answer all relevant questions.

Think of websites as something that needs to be oiled regularly. For the sake of this article, let’s compare them to a car. Your car needs proper monthly maintenance to ensure that it’ll get you where you want. You bought it, and now you must keep it well-maintained and attractive, so it’s always up and running.

The same applies to your website. You’ve invested money in its creation, and you’ve devoted precious time in content creation and portraying your business in the best light. But a website is not something that you create once, and then you just wait for it to function on its own. That’s not how the digital world works - at least for now.

What Is Website Maintenance?

What Are Website Maintenance Services?

Why Is It Important?

How Much Does it Cost per Month?

What are my Options?

Paying for Website Maintenance Services: The Advantages

Website Maintenance Plans

Exai Can Help Your Small Business

What Is Website Maintenance?

Do you know how you regularly check your car for leaks and damages? Well, website maintenance is the process of checking to see whether your website is performing well. It’s about keeping up with security updates, encouraging traffic growth, and making sure Google is happy. In fact, website maintenance services are an essential ingredient for engaging and retaining your customers. We all know the difficulty when dealing with wordpress sites.

To ensure your website is in a healthy and relevant condition, you need to perform regular check-ups. Not once a year, not twice a year. We’re talking about regular monitoring that will help you keep your business running smoothly and customers enjoying their user experience.

Looking for cost-effective website maintenance services?

Exai can maintain your site and improve its performance fast and cost-effectively.

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What Are Website Maintenance Services and How To Maintain a Website?

Do you know how often you need to remove spam comments from posts? Weekly! Or how often you should renew your domain name? Annually!

As soon as your website is up and running, it’s time to start taking care of the most basic and crucial web maintenance tasks. We’ve organized these services by separate tasks and by how often you should perform them.

Annual tasks

Renew your website domain name.
Consider updating your website design.
Review each page of the site to make sure its content is accurate.
Find your best-performing blogs and consider updating them.

Quarterly tasks

Review your website and check if there’s room for improvement.
Update your web graphics and photos.
Check your website content and make sure it’s up-to-date.
Update your meta descriptions and meta titles.
Make sure that the website is mobile-friendly and it displays nicely on all browsers.
Test and update popups, forms, and calls to action.
Check to see if anything needs to be changed or updated with your advertising and marketing campaigns.
Restore the most recent backup to check your backup health.

Monthly tasks

Test your website loading speed. If it takes more than three seconds to load, you should talk to your web developer.
Analyze your security scans and if there are any issues, make sure they’re resolved.
Analyze website statistics.
Check your local search visibility.

Weekly tasks

Check your website for 404 errors and if there are any, fix or 301 redirect them.
Update your core plugins and website software.
Post one or more blog posts to give relevant information to your customers and improve your SEO traffic.
Check for broken links.

Why Is It Important to Do Website Maintenance?

If eyes are windows to the soul, then websites are windows to your business. When customers or search engines land on your website, they’re looking for something that’ll let them know you’re a professional business. A professional business that’s offering something of value. With regular website updates and maintenance, your business will attract and retain customers, offer useful content, and maintain good search engine rankings.

Let’s analyze the most important benefits of regular servicing in more detail!

Customer experience

Let’s imagine for a second that you’re a customer and you land on a website. On that website, you experience slow load times, spamming messages greet you every 5 seconds, and broken links are everywhere. You will probably feel annoyed and frustrated.

Now imagine that you land on a professionally maintained website. You see a beautiful website design, find relevant content on the blog, and move through the website with ease. You will feel happy and satisfied.

Today, nearly 89% of businesses compete primarily on the basis of customer experience. To compare, only 36% did so in 2010. So, it’s as bright as day: regular site maintenance can lead to positive customer experience.

And not only that you’ll impress your customers, but you’ll also experience additional revenue. Customers will be motivated to buy your product or service because your website left a positive impression. What’s more, these customers will become your promoters. They’ll spread the word about your website and refer your business to their family and friends. All free of charge.

SEO

Customers are not the only visitors to your website. There are other things crawling your website and we like to call them website crawlers. These crawlers can promote or bury your business to the ground. But what’s the thing with SEO and why is it so important?

In a nutshell, Google analyzes your website with the help of its Google bots. These Google bots look for key bits of information that signal to Google the value of your website. Google will be analyzing your website’s keyword optimization, your site’s structure and organization, and site errors.

For example, if a Googlebot crawls your website and finds poorly done redirects, duplicate pages, and error pages, your SEO ranking will significantly decrease. Meaning, your business will rank poorly on search engines and your customers will have a hard time finding your website. Driving valid traffic to your website it’s the lifeline for your business, so making sure everything is rightly optimized is a must.

Business reputation

Customers are on the lookout for a business that they can trust. However, a poorly maintained website with many broken links, outdated content and dead pages is a customers repeller. They will get the impression that your business is irrelevant, old-fashioned, and insecure.

So, if you want to present your business in a positive light and establish yourself as a secure and innovative company, regular upkeep is essential. Fix your broken links, produce new content, and redirect your old pages. Only by doing so, you’ll succeed at making a good impression and gaining your customers’ trust.

Cost savings

Ignoring your website’s health for a long time can result in an accumulation of issues and problems. Improper site maintenance will lead to downtimes or complete loss of business. If multiple things go wrong, you’ll need to spend thousands of dollars to fix them.

So, it’s always a smarter idea to invest in web maintenance services and continually keep your website healthy and error-free. Your business and your budget will thank you.

How Much Does Website Maintenance Cost per Month?

Website maintenance can be a total pain. However, the longer you leave it, the worse it’ll get. Investing in upkeep services seems like a smart thing to do. You’ll save yourself time, effort, and stress in the long run.

Here’s detailed information on costs in 2019:

Type of Website

Small personal blog / portfolio website

Active blog and a large audience

Small business company

Uncustomized e-commerce website

Custom-built e-commerce website

Price Per Month

$5 - $30 (domain name + hosting services)

$5 - $100 (domain name + hosting + updates + marketing + backups)

$35 - $300 (domain name + hosting + updates + marketing + backups + content + design)

$150 - $1500 + (content + code customization + customer data)

$300 - $2000 + (staff of developers to keep a close eye on the maintenance)

The five most common web maintenance costs that we’ll consider in more detail are the following:

Domain renewal costs: The cost of your domain name depends on your hosting company. Each host has its own prices, packages, and fees. The average cost of a domain name is $10-$15 per year.
Hosting services: The monthly hosting plans can range from $10 to as high as $99 for managed hosting.
Website framework updates: You need to update your website regularly if you want it to perform well. This includes scheduling downtime for updates, testing the functionality of your site after the updates, and debugging the source code to fix errors. If you don’t have an IT professional working in-house, you should consider hiring an IT consultant or a web maintenance company. You have two options: pay-as-you-go maintenance that costs around $120/hour, or a fixed pricing plan that costs anywhere from $50 - $100 per hour
Content costs: Your business might offer the best service or product on the market, but if it doesn’t offer relevant and up-to-date content, everything else will go down the drain. You should hire a copywriter to create engaging content and help your website rank better with search engines. Freelance copywriters bill on an hourly, per piece, or per word basis.
SEO costs: SEO is what makes your website rank well on Google. Without it, no one will know that your business exists. SEO experts make sure that your site is fine-tuned to appear on the first page on Google. You can hire an SEO expert or work with a company that offers SEO services. The monthly costs for SEO range from $200 to $800 and include services like keyword research, website analysis, site analytics, off-page link building, and competitor analysis.

What are my Website Maintenance Options?

Business owners have four options when it comes to web maintenance:

Hire a web and marketing team in-house. This is a more expensive option. You have to pay for each person’s salary, benefits, overhead costs, etc.
Hire a variety of specialized freelancers. Hiring freelancers is less pricey but it requires good coordination and communication. The issue here can be that freelancers work independently and don’t see the bigger picture of your business.
Hire a web maintenance company. Working with a web maintenance company is a smart option. It will have all the resources you need for web maintenance, including strategy, marketing, and programming services.
Do it yourself. If you decide to handle the web maintenance yourself, be prepared to invest an ample amount of your time and patience.

Paying for Website Maintenance Services: The Advantages

Protection of your brand

Let’s imagine this scenario. You walk into your employee’s office only to find them to be deeply asleep. Instead of completing the tasks for the day, they’re off to dreamy paradise. Well, that’s how the visitors of your website feel when they land on your site only to find that it’s not performing well.

Okay, if it happens once, it’s not a big deal. Maybe you’re updating your content or dealing with security concerns. However, if it happens three times or more, customers will lose respect for your brand. They’ll think of your business as unreliable and unsafe for them to shop there.

The end results? You’ll slowly start losing customers and a great deal of money. Your brand becomes a joke and you might end up closing your company. It’s your worst nightmare becoming a reality.

To avoid the nightmare, you need to invest in proper website care services. Take care of your brand and make your site is a modern and responsive one. Your customers will appreciate it and won’t leave you for the competition.

Staying up-to-date

The internet, just like everything else, is constantly evolving. New plugins, functionalities, and designs are coming out on the market every month. Keeping up with these new releases can help your website remain healthy and relevant.

What’s more, not only that your website should perform well with desktop devices, it should work flawlessly with other devices such as tablets and smartphones. Experts believe that 72% of people will use only mobile for internet by 2025.

If your site is not up-to-date, you’re risking losing customers and even worse, gaining hackers. Hackers love outdated Wordpress websites to hack and attack. Ensure that your site conforms to security standards and is protected against unwanted visitors.

Avoid losing revenue

The aim of any business is to generate revenue. Without it, you can’t maintain your company and pay your employees. Well, what if we tell you that failing to invest in website maintenance services will result in you losing large amounts of revenue?

No, it’s not a far-fetched concept. Just think about it. Every time your website is down, you’re losing customers. Did you know that 77% of users said they would give up trying to access a website if they see a 404 error? What’s more, 47% of consumers expect a web page to load in 2 seconds or less!

So, instead of having visitors on your site, browsing your content and making a purchase, you’ll have disappointed people leaving your site and going to your competitors.

If your website experiences regular downtimes, people will start spreading the bad news. You’ll start losing customers, one by one. If you can’t afford to lose revenue, you’ll be needing a reliable site.

An up-to-date and modern website is a customers magnet. By maintaining the content on your site and keeping up with security protocols and updates, you’ll manage to boost your online sales. People will get all the information they need about your business and services/products, and you’ll get the revenue you need to keep your business alive.

Focus on your core business

Maintaining a Wordpress or Joomla website is a time-consuming job. From analyzing your security scans and testing your website loading speed to updating your core plugins, you need to take care of everything yourself.

When will you find the time for focusing on your core business? When will you work on your business strategy and promoting your business? Well, getting professional help by hiring people to maintain your website, you’ll have plenty of time to run your business.

By paying for website maintenance services, you won’t have to spend hours fixing a site problem. You can leave the task to the experts and spend your time working on something that you love and have the skills for. Accept the fact that you don’t know everything and that you don’t have to do everything yourself. Invest in the health of your business because that’s the only road to success.

Plans

The majority of web maintenance companies offer three types of plans, including:

Monthly plans. These monthly plans can keep your company secure, functional, and up-to-date for your users. They include services such as updates, email/webmail/mobile support, online customer support, Google Analytics traffic reports, etc.
Hourly plans. The hourly plans are perfect for any business that doesn’t need the routine maintenance of a monthly package. These hourly plans include the same services as the monthly packages. The only difference is that you’ll be charged by the hour.
After-hours plans. If you need maintenance 24/7, most web maintenance companies offer after-hours support plans. Your website will be monitored day and night.

Exai Can Help Your Small Business

Maintaining your Wordpress website on your own can be time-consuming and frustrating. Working with freelancers may result in poor coordination and unsatisfactory maintenance of your website. Hiring an in-house team is a highly expensive option. This leads us to your last and best option: working with a web maintenance company like Exai. A website servicing company can take care of your website and improve its performance and security fast and on budget.

Exai is the best solution for building, hosting, and maintaining your website. Our services are vast and include web management, hosting, and maintenance services. Exai is doing auto updates so it can keep your website up to standards.

Some of the services we offer are:

Website migration on the Exai platform.
Hosting services.
SEO updates.
Plugin updates.
Managing website up-time 24/7.
Security and malware scans.
Full mobile compliance.
Content updates.
System and software updates.

We offer three types of packages, including:

Small package: if your website has 20 pages or less, then the small package is the right pick for you. For a one-time payment of $690, your website will be migrated it to a fully managed solution on the Exai platform. For an additional $11/month billed annually, you’ll get a hosting service for your website with full upkeep services included in the fee. Or, you can opt to pay $15/month billed monthly and get a premium hosting service for your site and website maintenance services.
Medium package: the medium package is aimed at a website that has 40 pages or less. For a one-time payment of $870, your website will be migrated it to a fully managed solution on the Exai platform. We’ll take care of all website updates, including plugins, SEO, content updates, and software updates. A team of engineers and marketers will be taking care of your website, 24/7. It’s also possible to be charged $11/month annually, or $15/month billed monthly to gain access to our hosting and website maintenance services.
Custom package: the custom package is for a website with up to 100 pages. You need to request a personal quote. Contact us on chat so you can get a tailored offer.

If you choose to work with Exai, we promise to provide your company with a comprehensive plan that will help your business deliver a secure and seamless online experience.

General FAQ

What Is Website Maintenance?

Website maintenance is the process of checking to see whether your website is performing well. It’s about keeping up with security updates, encouraging traffic growth, and making sure Google is happy.

What Are Website Maintenance Services?

Website maintenance services are an essential ingredient for engaging and retaining customers. They are organized by separate tasks: Annual, Monthly, and Weekly tasks. Here are some examples:

- Website domain name renewing

- Review your website and check if there’s room for improvement.

- Test your website loading speed. If it takes more than three seconds to load, you should talk to your web developer.

- Analyze your security scans and if there are any issues, make sure they’re resolved.

- Check your website for 404 errors and if there are any, fix or redirect them.

- Update your core plugins and website software.

Why Is It Important to Do Website Maintenance?

With regular website updates and maintenance, your business will attract and retain customers, offer useful content, and maintain good search engine rankings.